


Vienna waits for you

by tellthemstories



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-14
Updated: 2013-07-14
Packaged: 2017-12-20 04:34:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/882996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tellthemstories/pseuds/tellthemstories
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire is drinking when the doorbell rings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vienna waits for you

Grantaire is drinking when the doorbell rings.

\- - -

It’s been seven years since the death of Lamarque, the death that set the ball rolling, but what happened next was entirely their fault.  

They had pushed too hard, too fast, and the country hadn’t been ready. No one had been ready.  The revolution had caught and held strong and as a result the government had retaliated in the worst possible way, trying to put them all down with a strong, decisive move, countering the riots with tear gas and guns then locking people up and sentencing them without trial. But Enjolras had prepared for that.

He had prepared for everything, at first.

\- - -

Grantaire still catches glimpses of him sometimes, when the news reports on the latest uprisings, in Bordeaux, in Rouen, in Corsica. The location doesn’t matter; he is always a god amongst men yelling for liberation and freedom, passionate in his ideals even as he is hunted for them. He watches the news reports for as long as he can stomach, then turns the TV off and drinks himself into oblivion.

It’s hard to tell who’s winning. Sometimes the government will make an announcement, say that they have finally crushed the rebellion, and the people, tired and exhausted from the riots and upheaval, will settle down. They’ll accept politicians for as long as it takes for them to remember why they disliked them in the first place, and then it will be Enjolras’s face on the news and speeches about freedom, liberty and justice and the whole thing will start up again.

Most of the time it is stalemate.

Most of the time he just wishes it was all over.

\- - -

The world outside Grantaire’s living room window is dark, the street empty aside from a few locked cars. Other apartment blocks loom up in the darkness, their doors and windows hidden behind strong steel bars. The street lamps glow orange in the gloom and shadows creep across the pavement, thick and viscous. Inside the kitchen, the clock on the stove blinks from 23:57 to 23:58.

His own apartment is quiet, the silence hanging heavy.The refrigerator hums as the wind whistles through the gap under the kitchen window, and he makes a mental note to plug it with tape tomorrow; a laborious task, but sometimes monotony is all he has.

People are dying, the revolution is interminable and the world — the world keeps on turning.

Grantaire sighs and steps away from the window, setting the whiskey he is holding down on the box he uses as a coffee table and picking up the black bin liner on the floor. He unlocks the door carefully, counting to five between each click, steeling himself for the world outside. His footsteps echo on the metal staircase as he descends, reverberating back from the dense concrete walls. When he reaches the ground floor his feet crunch on the remnants of forgotten letters, addressed to people who no longer live - or care.  His own post box is empty, has been since he moved in.

But then, the name on it is not his.

When he steps out into the cold night air his breath coalesces into fragile white clouds and he tilts his head to watch them fade, a phantom pain flaring in his shoulder. On cold nights like this the bullet wound there seizes up, reminding him of a table in a kitchen in Marseille, his life seeping out of his body and voices yelling through the haze. Bahorel had held his body down whilst Combeferre and his steady hands had rooted around in his shoulder for the bullet. He’d cursed and screamed and thrashed, begging them to let him die.

They hadn’t.

He wonders if anything would have been different if they had.

As he lifts the lid on the outside bin he hears movement in the shadows and turns his head, searching for a figure in the darkness, but everything is still.  He takes a breath and then lifts the black bin bag into the huge dumpster and slams the top shut with a bravado he doesn’t feel, hoping to scare off anyone who might consider coming too close. He still carries a knife, always, jammed into the side of his left boot, but he hasn’t had reason to use it for a long time. When no one emerges from the darkness, he takes a breath and heads back up the staircase, echoing footsteps. When he’s inside and the door is shut behind him, he reaches automatically for the whiskey and massages the dull ache in his shoulder.

He’s pouring another shot when the doorbell rings — and he knows.

He always does.

\- - -

It had started with a spark, idealism blazing in a pair of blue eyes and blond hair burned gold in the afternoon sun. They had been at a rally and the police had been called. Brute force had been used to subdue them and blood had been spilt.

It had been a far cry from the passionate debates of their youth, in a small wine bar in Paris called the Corinthe, when they’d been young and naive and thought that they could change the world with words alone. That particular rally had shown them otherwise; pacifism was beautiful, honorable — and utterly impossible.

Violence became the answer.

\- - -

His own involvement with the Cause (because it was the Cause now, with a capital letter, though it had been lowercase then) had started when he was a teenager at University, fucking about with an art degree but having no real inclination to do anything with his life.

He’d stumbled across the rally by accident, on his way back home across campus after a late night out drinking that had dawned into morning, the early hours creeping up on him until suddenly the sun was piercing through the drunken haze over his eyes. There had been a bottle of vodka dangling from his thumb and forefinger and the wind had caught and held Enjolras’s words, blowing them across the courtyard to where he was standing, transfixed.

For a while, he’d believed.

He’d gone to the meetings and took part in the rallies and thought it was all very admirable, right up until he’d realised that they were actually _serious_ , that they really thought they could change the world. Then he’d made the mistake of laughing and Enjolras’s eyes had snapped to his across the room, full of fire, and they’d had their first ever argument.

It had felt like pushing a bruise, painful and sharp, causing his breath to catch and his attention to focus, but he couldn’t help himself. It was the start of an addiction he’d never been able to kick.

So, like a fool, he’d continued to attend the meetings, casually shooting holes in Enjolras’s rhetoric and praying that these young men weren’t really going to throw their lives away for a cause he didn’t believe in. He’d tried to show them the futility of their beliefs in a better world, but no one ever listens to the drunk in the corner.

Later, they’d used his art skills for protests and he’d found himself making banners and posters and leaflets, designing slogans for things he no longer believed in, his cynicism amused by the irony that someone as ugly as he could create something so beautiful.

He’d already been more than half-in love with Enjolras, even then.

Eventually, when rallies turned to protests turned to riots, when idealism burned and twisted and they went to war, he’d been drafted in to help with research, had spent long hours by Combeferre’s side, learning how to trawl the internet for information and make secure channels for their dealings, mastered breaking through firewalls and cracking passwords. He’d been good at his job - better, in fact, than any of them had ever given him credit for - but then he’d started drinking when they’d really needed him, to dull the pain of the missions that went wrong, and soon his fingers were clumsy and stilted when they hit the keys and Combeferre’s hand was on his arm, gentle, telling him to stop.

\- - -

Out in the hallway he can just make out the shadow in the gap under the door, the sign that someone is here, that they’ve found him, and he knows he should be thinking of escape routes and climbing out of the bathroom window onto the fire escape but he’s not. He’s just — _exhausted_.

He takes a breath and opens the door.

Enjolras stares back at him, bloody and bruised in a thick dark hoodie pulled up to hide his hair.  It’s his most distinguishing mark; he should have cut it off, but he’s a symbol now and people are supposed to recognise him, even if it gives him a greater chance of being captured and tortured for information. He looks more drawn than when they saw each other last (two? Three years ago? Time blurs and memory fades) and there are new lines around his eyes.

They look at each other for a long while and then Grantaire steps back, letting him in. Enjolras doesn’t hesitate, just steps past him and heads straight through to the kitchen - like he’s been here before (which he probably has; Enjolras has been involved in all of this for so long now that he no longer trusts anyone. It’s a mystery, then, why he keeps coming back to Grantaire). Grantaire detours to the living room to pick up the half-empty bottle of whiskey then follows without question. It’s an old habit, but one that’s hard to kick.

He breaks open the first aid kit he’s always got fully stocked for these occasions, though he never knows when - if - they’ll come again. Enjolras has seated himself on the rickety old table, is in the process of propping one foot up on a chair when Grantaire walks in. The blond sees the whiskey and holds his hand out to it wordlessly, twisting the top off with his teeth before taking a long drink. He wrinkles his nose when he swallows, but barely bats an eyelash when Grantaire peels the leg of his jeans back to reveal a long gash still oozing thick blood along his calf.

Enjolras finishes what’s left of the whiskey and starts another bottle as Grantaire gets to work, sterilising a hooked needle with the lighter in his back pocket and threading a piece of cotton through it on the second attempt. He sews the gash back up with alarming skill considering the amount of alcohol he’s imbibed in the last few hours, and feels Enjolras’s gaze on him the entire time. Tries to ignore how it feels like a bullseye on the back of his neck.

The blond has helped himself to some of the other supplies, chewing on a handful of painkillers then tearing the packet of an antiseptic wipe open with his teeth, wincing when he holds it to the cut across his eyebrow. The skin around his eye is already starting to darken with a bruise, shadowed in the half-light bleeding in from the streetlamp outside.

When he’s finished, Grantaire snaps the cotton on his teeth and stands, taking the whiskey back from Enjolras to take a swig, smearing blood. As he does so the blond leans down to inspect his leg, fingertips running along the bumps where he’s been sewn back together, thoughtful.  He wipes the blood from his fingers off on his jeans and then hooks his foot behind Grantaire’s knee, using it to pull him in closer to stand between his legs. Grantaire’s thighs hit the edge of the table and for a second he lets himself relax, rests his forehead against Enjolras’s and drinks in his presence, allows himself this brief moment.

It would be so easy, he thinks, to lose himself in this. To take these little interludes for more than they are and build them into a glass tower. To play at being in love with a god when all he’ll get is blood and death and despair.

“You beautiful, stupid, bastard,” he says finally, their noses brushing as he moves to straighten up, but then Enjolras has a hand in his shirt and is keeping him in place, blue eyes locked with his. They’re hazy, not with pain or alcohol but with a deep, bone-aching weariness he knows all too well. Grantaire detaches his hand carefully, brushing his thumb over the grazes on the knuckles, noting the new imperfections and recording them in his mind for later as he pulls the blond to his feet. They make their way to the bedroom in silence, their hands still joined.

Once inside, Grantaire undresses him with efficiency, and the sleepy Enjolras offers no resistance as the painkillers set to work, just sinks back onto the mattress with a soft sigh, and closes his eyes.

\- - -

It was Jehan’s death - so full of life and then suddenly so empty - that sent Enjolras underground.

There had been deaths before, of course, but they had all been a case of wrong place, wrong time. Outside members who had tried to be brave and make a name for themselves and had watched it all blow up in their face. Jehan’s death had been different, because Jehan’s death had been an execution.

The government would later go on to deny it, of course, would claim Jehan fired the first shot, but everyone who knew him knew that wasn’t true, knew that he had surrendered when they cornered him near the Rue de la Verrerie, not far from where Courfeyrac and Marius had been staying at the time. It had been too good an opportunity to miss, as far as the shooters were concerned. Here was one of Enjolras’s closest confidants, willingly giving himself up, and they had naïvely thought that it would bring an end to everything.

Enjolras, Feuilly and Grantaire had been in the apartment at the time, the former two pouring over a map of the city whilst Grantaire sat on the floor under the window, cradling a bottle of wine. They’d heard the confrontation in the street outside and Feuilly had been forced to physically restrain Enjolras from charging out onto the street to stop them, had rallied against his curses and pinned him against the wall whilst Grantaire sat, and listened, and drank.

He had heard every moment of the execution, the way Jehan’s voice trembled slightly when he confirmed who he was, heard the vicious excitement in the shooter’s voices and the sound of two knees being forced down onto the cobblestones. Jehan hadn’t cared that he was going to die, had continued to defend the revolution and what would come after, refusing to tell them where the others were currently stationed, in an apartment only a stones throw away.

Enjolras broke two fingers punching the wall and Grantaire turned the wine bottle over in his hands, tracing the label but seeing nothing as he listened to Jehan’s last words.

There was a single shot.

And then,

silence.

Jehan had died defending the cause and Enjolras - Enjolras had never quite been the same after.

\- - -

Before his drinking had become serious, he had been a boxer. The first time he’d put his boxing skills to use outside of the ring had been eight months after Lamarque’s death, when the protests had really started going and the authorities had turned brutal. One policeman had hit Éponine, splitting her lip and sending her tumbling to the ground and Gavroche, indomitable, reckless Gavroche had jumped in to defend her.  

Grantaire hadn’t even realised he was moving until he was darting between them, his fist crashing into the man’s nose with a satisfying crack. He felt cartilage and bone snap and then an answering fist was crushing his windpipe as a knee came up into his ribs.

He’d come to several hours later, sprawled across the lumpy sofa in the living room of Éponine’s apartment. Enjolras was sat at his feet, typing something into a laptop with one hand, the other tugging at his golden curls, and when Grantaire looked down at his own hands there was blood caked under his fingernails. Tearing his gaze away, he tried to push himself up into a sitting position and his ribs ground painfully against each other.

“Be careful,” Enjolras said, without looking up from the screen. “You lost a lot of blood.”  He slanted a look across at him and then added, “He lost more.”

“I need a fucking drink.”

He needed more than that, but Enjolras was never willing to give it. They had a war to win, after all. He had no time for reassuring Grantaire that it was all still worth it, that near-death experiences were just a blip on the radar, and Grantaire knew he wouldn’t have believed him if he tried. He’d walked into this willingly and he’d done it knowing that there would be no sympathy, no comfort, no happiness.

No future.

\- - -

Though he’s not involved in the Cause any more, he still helps in his own way, sometimes. He never knows where Enjolras is, doesn’t know if the message will reach him in time, but he knows that any postcard addressed to the non-existent Café Musain at 51 Boulevard Saint-Michel and given two-and-a-half stamps will always find its way to him, in time.

\- - -

Enjolras doesn’t sleep for long. Three hours after he’s put to bed, he pads back into the kitchen, wearing a pair of Grantaire’s soft tracksuit bottoms, his feet bare on the linoleum. He comes to stand next to him at the window and Grantaire wordlessly hands him the coffee he’s drinking without looking. Enjolras’s hands curl around it, accepting it without question as he leans back against the countertop. Their elbows brush.  

There’s a small spot of blood on the chair where he’d propped up his leg before, looking black in the half-light and threatening, a sign that the revolution has made it to his apartment, forcing its way between the cracks in his life. The medical kit has vanished and the street outside the window is still empty. The radio crackles with static, playing the soft music of the night, instrumental and wordless, as the clock turns over to 4:01am.

Enjolras looks years older than he did when they last saw each other, and the light has faded from his eyes. Where he once burned with a passion his fervour has now been whittled down to ice: cold, calculating and cruel. Grantaire remembers how he had cried, once, the first time he’d had to shoot someone for the cause, only now he dispatches people as easily as breathing. There is nothing left of the boy who had laughed with his friends and made passionate speeches about the world of tomorrow.

Grantaire is used to this but at the same time, he never will get used to it. He’s watched the reality of the revolution strip the humanity from Enjolras year by year, reducing him to hard marble, and he’s not been able to do a thing to stop it.

Enjolras finishes the coffee and puts the mug down on the counter, takes a breath and asks: “Are you with us, or against us?” It is an old argument, re-hashed every time they catch these stolen moments. It is one neither is able to win, yet Enjolras always asks, as if reassuring himself that whilst the world goes to hell around them, Grantaire is still always there, refusing to bend to his will, a reluctant anchor in the storm, even though the fleet is long-sunk.  

“Neither.”  His answer never changes but sometimes — he wonders.

“You believe in nothing.”

“I believe in you,” Grantaire had told him once. The words hang between them now, heavy and unspoken. There had been a time and a place, a fracture in time when he’d thought maybe, just maybe, they would pull this off.

But then the deaths had started.

He’s still haunted by them, even now. Jehan, Bossuet, Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Bahorel. They had all been beautiful, once, full of revolutionary fervour and the belief they could change the world. Bossuet had been the first to go, his bad luck catching up on him with a stray bullet to the neck in a place where police brutality was very much the name of the game. He’d bled out over Grantaire’s kitchen floor, his body shaking with a cold no one else could feel, his eyes losing focus as Joly leaned over him, hands slippery with his blood, for once not caring about disease as he tried to bring him back to life by the sheer force of his pleading.

Combeferre and Courfeyrac had gone together, and with them they’d taken the heart and soul of the group. They’d been caught by a car bomb in Paris, one minute there and then in the next instant wiped off the map completely, one of those utterly unpredictable tragedies no one had been prepared for. Enjolras had never quite been the same after that. He was was still very much the group’s leader, but there was no one to temper him now, no one to rationalise and theorise and turn him towards a less terrible path.

Grantaire had seen Bahorel on the news not long after Enjolras had gone underground, insouciant till the end, forcing four grown men to drag him to the noose. One of them had given him a bloody nose and without anything to stop it, the blood had dried and cracked around his mouth, his teeth outlined in red when he gave one last defiant smile. He tried to say ‘long live the Revolution’ when they hung him, but the noose tightened and he got no further than ‘live’.

They mocked him for that, afterwards.  

\- - -

Back in the present Enjolras is still looking at him expectantly, waiting for an answer to his question. Waiting for him to confirm or deny what he believes in, as if everything he feels can be summed up in a neat little package when there’s been so much, they’ve come so far and the world has undeniably shifted.  

“I don’t know,” he says finally, and it’s the most honest answer he can give. The bullet wound in his shoulder aches and his dreams are filled with blood. “Do you even know what you’re fighting for, any more?”

“Freedom. Equality. Justice.” The answer is rote, and Grantaire wonders if he even believes in what he is saying, now he’s seen the price of all three.

“People are dying.”

“For what they believe in.”

He laughs, and the sound is bitter and hollow as he pushes away from the kitchen counter. He doesn’t look at Enjolras as he says, “Oh sure, the little girl who was killed by a stray bullet when she wandered too close to a riot, she died for what she believed in. The high school bus that was used as a bomb in Normandy, with all forty-seven children on board, they died for what they believed in. The young couple in Corsica who were set upon by a mob because her grandfather had been against Lamarque’s reforms, they died for what they believed in.”

“Some deaths - are necessary,” Enjolras says, his mouth struggling to find the words. He would not have said that seven years ago. “There are always casualties in war.”

“Do you even listen to yourself?” Grantaire demands, turning to look at him again “It’s all for the greater good, is that what this is about? Thousands of innocent people should die so the world can be reshaped how you want it?”

Enjolras frowns. “Sometimes these things have to happen so people take notice, so they realise just what is at stake. Otherwise they just think - someone else will do it, it’s nothing to do with me.”

“And massacring innocents is the way forwards? Starting a war and not caring who dies? This whole revolution is built on death and your republic will be founded on a mountain of bones. Just because people follow you blindly and believe what you say, that doesn’t mean it’s right. The means don’t always justify the ends. You knew that, once.”

This is Enjolras’s problem, he thinks. He is both charming and terrible, and without Combeferre and Courfeyrac to temper him, the latter has outweighed the former. He no longer thinks in shades of grey, but black and white. He sees people only as for the revolution and against, and does whatever he can to eradicate one so he can achieve the other.

“I acknowledge your point,” Enjolras admits, finally, and it’s not an acceptance or a promise to change but it’s —  _something_. He cards a hand back through his hair and sighs, saying, “Death is - inevitable, but it is not the goal.” He says this every time, getting a look in his eye like he understands Grantaire and he wants to change, to go back to how things were when they were at university, but it never lasts. It can’t. The revolution is its own monster now, one they can no longer tame.

Still, that moment, that flash of humanity, that’s what turns his heart over in his chest at times like these, when Enjolras walks back into his life. It’s what makes him search out his face in a crowd and obsessively check the news on his laptop for reports of his whereabouts. It’s the knowledge that he’s still in love with him after all this time, and that underneath it all - at least for now - there’s still something worth saving.

(He knows that one day, he’s going to see him and that last shred of humanity will be gone.)

“It’s just - it’s so _hard_ , sometimes,” Enjolras says, frustrated, “They don’t see, they don’t understand. I’m trying to do what’s best and I wouldn’t have gone this far, done these things if I didn’t think it would make a better world.”

He is vulnerable and open and so, so young, and Grantaire’s heart fractures a little, as it always does, coming apart at the seams. He steps forwards, closing the distance to trace the bruise already forming over Enjolras’s brow, curving around to his cheekbone. “You’re not a monster,” he says gently, and he doesn’t miss the irony that he’s the one being positive, though he always is, when it comes to Enjolras. “No matter what they say. You don’t have to be what they make you. You are not the thing you are trying to destroy.”

Things are quiet for a split second, Enjolras’s eyes honest and open and blue, and then the blond is surging forwards and closing the distance to kiss him.

\- - -

The first time they’d had sex, Courfeyrac had been asleep in the bunk above. Grantaire had muffled his cries in Enjolras’s neck and the blond had gasped his name out like a secret in the dark. It had been quick and rushed and over in minutes, as all fumbled handjobs are, in the dark in a single bed in a hostel just outside of Lyon.

The second time had been months later, when Grantaire was sick with love and longing and the nauseous feeling of wanting but not ever fully having. Enjolras had returned from a meeting triumphant, had pulled him out of the room and into an alcove when no one else was looking, had let Grantaire back him against the wall and given his body over to him.

That had also been the first time they’d kissed: hard, passionate, fierce, with teeth and lips and tongue. When he finally _finally_ thrust into him, Enjolras had hissed in a sharp breath and bitten down hard on his bottom lip and when he’d cried Grantaire’s name out into the night it was bloody.

He could never win Enjolras away from his cause, but he learnt to find stolen moments, against walls and in alleys and once, memorably, in a four-poster bed in a dusty mansion in Corsica.  But they’d both known it couldn’t last (he didn’t think Enjolras had ever entertained thoughts that it might) and so it was as bitter as it was sweet, because it was easier to hate than it was to love — though in the end they were both sides of the same coin.

\- - -

When Enjolras had decided to go underground Grantaire had known he would remain above. He had already started surviving only on alcohol and he had long been removed from doing any work towards the Cause, they’d known even then that he was no longer a part of the revolution.

“Come with us,” Enjolras had tried to convince him once, after two months apart one particularly hot summer, one hand tangled in his hair and the other pressed against his chest, just above his heart, his lips bruised from kissing and his gaze sharp with determination. “We can make a difference.”

“Everyone can make a difference,” Grantaire had replied, monotone, and if Enjolras could feel his heart breaking through the thin fabric of his shirt, he hadn’t mentioned it, “But it rarely makes things better.”

They’d had sex that night, the type that left evidence; bite marks on collarbones and bruises in the shape of fingerprints on his shoulders. He’d said a lot of things that night, whispered promises and murmured devotions, but none of them had been what Enjolras had wanted to hear; none had been acquiescence.

Four days later Enjolras had gone, and Grantaire hadn’t seen him again for four-hundred and eighty-three days.  

\- - -

Days slip into months slip into years. Time passes without him hearing anything, without knowing if Enjolras or the others are alive or dead. His postcards are sent but he’s never sure if they arrive and in the meantime, he drinks. He wanted out and they let him go, which is more than anyone else has been granted, before or since, though this half-existence - silent and lonely and isolated - is not really a life at all, he knows.

Then one day there will be a knock on his door in the dead of night and eyes that plead _help me_ , and he’ll be dragged back into it all over again.

\- - -

His back hits the doorframe as they stumble back through the living room, his elbow hitting the door to the bedroom. Enjolras gasps into his mouth, is ruthlessly efficient as he divests Grantaire of the knife in his boot and the gun under his pillow, strips him of his defences with a cool, business-like manner, the gun kicked under the bed and the knife buried in the wood of the bedside table where it quivers and then stands still. Grantaire watches moonlight glint off the metal as Enjolras kisses a line down his throat, brushes lips across his collarbone, sinks his teeth into his skin.

His body is covered with new bruises and scars and imperfections. Grantaire catalogues them all, traces them with his fingertips, maps them with his tongue, kisses them into memory as he drops to his knees and takes Enjolras into his mouth.

The blond’s hips buck against him and he grips hold of them tightly, keeping them in place as he works at reducing Enjolras to a shivering, straining mess. Then Enjolras’s hands are in his hair, dragging him back up to kiss then pulling him back down onto the bed, legs curling around his hips as he grinds up against him.

He’s perfect and vicious and cruel, a wanted criminal throughout France and many other countries besides, a known terrorist and fierce revolutionary, a man who can command others to fall at his feet and strike fear into the hearts of governments the world over.

But here, in the confines of four walls in a nondescript apartment in the centre of Paris he is crying out Grantaire’s name as he thrusts into him, arches against him, falls apart.

Sometimes he just needs to be — human.

\- - -

“I love you,” Grantaire says, but it’s not enough, it’s never been enough.

He is Icarus and Enjolras is the sun, and flying too close only gets you burned. The sun will live on but Icarus, he will plummet, another life punished for reaching too high.

\- - -

Afterwards they fall asleep twined together, their hands joined.

Enjolras looks innocent when he sleeps, and relaxed in a way Grantaire knows he never is around others. He doesn’t know what it is that brings him to his door, doesn’t know what the trigger is that finally sets him off and makes him leave the revolution for a night. But he does know that one day the final lock on Enjolras’s humanity is going to snap and then there will never be a knock at his door again, knows one day he will go charging off the edge of the cliff into the abyss and he won't be able to pull him back. He knows this.

But still — these moments. Lying asleep on an old mattress, with the covers tangled around their legs and the clock turning over to 5:47, he can pretend that in another life, they found happiness. That somehow, somewhere, there is a version of them where this worked out, where their friends didn’t die and the revolution didn’t sour, where Enjolras grew up to make something of himself and was able to change the world. A place where they bicker over whose turn it is to take the rubbish out, make plans for the future, and every evening is spent like this, curled up and warm in his embrace.

Somewhere.

\- - -

In the morning Enjolras is gone and Grantaire — drinks.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [nyargles](http://archiveofourown.org/users/nyargles/pseuds/nyargles) for being my lovely beta (as always).
> 
> Title is from the lyrics to 'Vienna' by Billy Joel (suggested to me by the lovely [squarebrain](http://archiveofourown.org/users/squarebrain))
> 
> There's also a gorgeous photo set for this fic here [LES AMIS DE L’ABC - DESIGNATION: TERROR SECT](http://tell-themstories.tumblr.com/post/55514871881/lydiamlahey-les-amis-de-labc-designation)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> [Come say hi!](http://tell-themstories.tumblr.com/)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Vienna waits for you [podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1322410) by [defractum (nyargles)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nyargles/pseuds/defractum)




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